EC figures show turn-out at 47.72% in the Thai election

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This is an update to this post. Since then the EC issued new figures yesterday. Multiple papers – BP has also obtained independently – have the latest EC figures. See Naew Na and Matichon.

BP: As you can see a doubling of the spoilt/invalid votes and significant increase of “vote no”, although not at 2006 levels. It is hard to say precisely what % of either is anti-Puea Thai vote although I don’t think you can count all of it, particularly for spoilt votes as there is always around 5% who spoil their ballots at an election. The additional 7% you can argue that many were anti-Puea Thai. Similarly with “vote no” as there was no campaign like in 2006 to vote against the government by “vote no” although BP views at least 2.5-3 million are anti-Puea Thai votes.

See below – the estimate for PT is that of BP (the % in far right column is % of votes cast for parties that went for Puea Thai)

BP: The number of spoilt and vote no in the Northeast is quite low comparatively. This is more a reflection of how unpopular the Democrats are. Where Puea Thai have likely bled support is in the Central Region.

NOTE: If anyone has the LATEST EC release on February 6 complete break-down for each province – as in like this for 26 provinces – please send by e-mail bangkokpundit@gmail.com or @bangkokpundit on twitter.

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There will be many different ways to spin this, I would suggest adding up all the votes for Puea Thai as a percentage of the 35 million who typically vote, adding on to it an adjusted ‘bonus’ calculated on percentages who voted PT (party list) in those areas where voting could not take place (mostly Dem strongholds). Either way you look at it Puea Thai likely got no more than 33% of the total vote (down from 48% and less than that of the Democrats in the last election). We will never know (yet) how many votes Dems have lost as a result of their own behavior, but anyway 12 million out of 35 million (or 48 million eligible) is far from a majority. Even with everyone on-board a coalition (14.6m) you are still looking at less than 42%. A resulting govt would lack any legitimacy. As such, we had an election and it was a referendum on ‘election legitimacy’ and the numbers are clear, the majority chose no party at all.

RespectmyVote

On your calculation you would be denying the vote to any PT voter in the areas which could not vote because of protestors – that would include Lak Si where PT has a strong following. Let’s see how the by-elections are run.